


strangers (when have i unmet you)

by uraniafromspace



Series: what we could be, what we are (what we were) [2]
Category: Life with Derek
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25454170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uraniafromspace/pseuds/uraniafromspace
Summary: (They mimic each other from opposite ends of the table, the movements like mirrors. Certain things don’t allow themselves to be erased so easily).
Relationships: Casey McDonald/Derek Venturi (past)
Series: what we could be, what we are (what we were) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764688
Comments: 12
Kudos: 13





	strangers (when have i unmet you)

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.  
I love you straightforwardly, without problems or pride;  
so I love you because I know no other way to love:

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,  
so close that your hand on my chest is mine,  
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

(Pablo Neruda, Sonet XVII)

Casey laughs in front of him.

The sound is foreign to his ears, harsh and husky. Maybe she’s learned it in the after. It’s more serious, without any traces of the tinkle that used to permeate it. It matches her concentrated, almost professional look, as if the permanent mark of being a workaholic had finally settled onto her face.

(Derek remembers sunlit afternoons with a book and loose hair, when she’d let herself be more happy than somber. Sometimes time reminds him of things he should have already forgotten, like her laughter. The run of the years didn’t treat them kindly, only made more prominent the thin line between the brows, mouth. He wonders if she still smiles like she used to, or if that was another of the things she deliberately decided to leave behind).

Sometimes Casey looks at him in such a way he can’t read anymore. It used to be easy, like skating or riding a bike, things you never really forget. The distance that stretches on the dining table is bigger than an ocean. (Along the way they have unlearned to swim, they’ve unlearned many things they knew).

(They mimic each other from opposite ends of the table, the movements like mirrors. Certain things don’t allow themselves to be erased so easily).

She avoids his gaze. In the past, the looks they shared were like daggers, much before the leftovers of what they avoid serving at table now could have appeared (when the distance that separated them was just a step).

He knew the taste of her skin, the exact weight of her head on his shoulder, tucked with the nose next to his neck, when all they knew was to run the same tracks. It was hard to distinguish if it was Derek that followed her or if it was Casey who followed him, they walked so many circles that the beginning and the ending got lost. (He can’t grasp how he’s still whole when he’s just a half).

Casey tells an anecdote about work, the same face she uses to talk to clients is the one she uses with family. (In the dawn light she said she loved him so much there was no longer space for anything else, eyes as bare as the body, Derek wonders if she thinks about it as much as he).

(He’d never answered, the words stuck in his throat, one last step he never took).

Squeezed between the elbows, Derek catches Marti’s gaze. She says _what happened_ without uttering a single sound, eyes alternating between him and Casey.

Next cue, he tells a joke.

(Casey’s look is locked in the lines of Derek’s face when he’s not looking, it has the same weight as all the years of solitude that add between the two).

She used to be different.

(They’ve never seen each other after she decided leaving him ceded space to love all she was incapable with the area he used to occupy).

A hand abruptly cuts his thoughts.

“Derek, honey, can you pass the salt?” it asks extended, wedding band glittering in the light.

(Derek is not the same he used to be either.)

_(I used to know you)_

_(The path redoubled into me)_.

**Author's Note:**

> Finished my last test earlier today (yay!), so i'm posting this little sad thing i wrote when i was in my pms and feeling dramatic (i literally cried reading that pablo neruda poem, things were that bad).  
> oh, and the title is the translation of a sad song. also wanted to say part of this fic's notions of time as a circle was inspired by the amazing netflix show dark. i have been able to think about nothing but these series since i finished it (or was it when i started it? THE END IS THE BEGINNING)  
> hope you guys liked it!


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